176

I have bewept a worthy husband's death,
And lived by looking on his images.

177

All things, that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells;
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary.

178

24-ü. 2.

35-iv. 5.

O'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.

179

7-iii. 2.

O, now doth death line his dead chaps with steel;
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
And now he feasts, mouthing the flesh of men,
In undetermined differences of kings.

180

16-ii. 2.

His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little:
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died, fearing God.

181

Full of repentance,

Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows,

He gave his honours to the world again,

25-iv. 2.

His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

182

Grief softens the mind,

25-iv. 2.

And makes it fearful and degenerate.

22-iv. 3.

183

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day:
Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,
Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
So is her face illumined with her eye.

184

Poems.

She shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour moisten'd: then away she started
To deal with grief alone.

185

In the glasses of thine eyes

I see thy grieved heart.

186

Men judge by the complexion of the sky
The state and inclination of the day:
So may you by my dull and heavy eye,
My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

187

34-iv. 3.

Lo! here the hopeless merchant of this loss,

17-i. 3.

17-iii. 2.

With head declined, and voice damm'd up with woe,
With sad set eyes and wretched arms across,

From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow
The grief away, that stops his answer so;
But wretched as he is, he strives in vain;

What he breathes out, his breath drinks up again.
As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Out-runs the eye, that doth behold his haste;
Yet in the eddie boundeth in his pride

Back to the strait, that forced him on so fast,

In

rage sent out, recall'd in rage being past: Even so his sighs, his sorrows, make a saw, To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.

188

My particular grief Is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature,

Poems.

That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
And it is still itself.

189

37-i. 3.

When my heart,

As wedged with a sigh, would riveh in twain;
Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,
I have (as when the sun doth light a storm)
Bury'd this sigh in wrinkle of a smile:
But sorrow, that is couch'd in seeming gladness,
Is like that mirth, fate turns to sudden sadness.

190

Sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,

26-i. 1.

Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell.

191

'Tis with my mind

As with the tide, swell'd up unto its height,
That makes a still-stand, running neither way.

192

Poems.

19-ii. 3.

Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast. 17—ii. I.

193

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots,
As will not leave their tinct.i

36-iii. 4.

194

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;
And I myself see not the bottom of it.

195

26-iii. 3.

Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;

Your tributary drops belong to woe,

Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.

35-iii. 2.

196

My heart is great; but it must break with silence,
Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue.

197

17—ii. 1.

There's nothing in this world, can make me joy:
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,*

Aexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

198

16-iii. 4.

Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud,
And caterpillars eat my leaves away.

199

O, you kind gods,

22-iii, 1.

Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up
Of this child-changed father!

200

As the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints,
Like strengthless hinges buckle1 under life,
Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

34-iv. 7.

Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs,

Weaken'd with grief, being now enraged with grief, Are thrice themselves.m

201

Our strength is all gone into heaviness,
That makes the weight!

202

19-i. 1.

30-iv. 13.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

J Free.

k Ps. xc. 9.

16-iii. 4.

1 Bend, yield to pressure.

m Anger and terror have been known to remove a fit of the gout; to give activity to the bed-ridden; and to produce instantaneous and most extraordinary energies.

203

O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,
Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die;
And let belief and life encounter so,

As doth the fury of two desperate men,
Which, in the very meeting, fall and die.

204

Even through the hollow eyes of death,

I spy life peering; but I dare not say

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

205

16-iii. 1.

17—ü. 1.

The last she spake

Then in the midst of a tearing groan did break

Was, Antony! most noble Antony!

The name of Antony; it was divided

Between her heart and lips.

206

I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,
So fill'd, and so becoming.

207

Are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

208

30-iv. 12.

13-iii. 3.

36-iv. 7.

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;
Holding the eternal spirit against her will,

In the vile prison" of afflicted breath.

209

16-iii. 4.

That my pent heart may have some scope to beat, Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news.

24-iv. 1.

n "Vile body."---Phil. iii. 21.

• Transparent stuff.